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Articles, Comments, etc to make you think!

A Surprising Truth about your Business

Every so often, you hear things that rock you. Michael Gerber’s book called The E Myth is full of things that rock me. Like this: "most people work in the business NOT on it. The secret is to work ON it so that you can choose not to work IN it".

Powerful phrase isn’t it.

And how about this. "The sole purpose of creating a business is to sell it".

That’s really difficult for some people to see. You might say, "But hang on, I LOVE what I do! Why the hell would I want to sell it?"

The point is, of course, two fold -

One, if you didn’t sell it, then recognise that you bought it and ask yourself is it worth the price I'm paying - and I don’t just mean in ‘money terms’.

And two, if you thought about creating a business that you could sell, (whether or not you actually want to), you’d most likely start working ON it not IN it - right now.

That is the key to creating life. Most of us create a business — our life is our business. We should be using the business to create life — ours!

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The Amazing Cost of Losing Customers

Laura Liswood is a researcher in America. Ms. Liswood’s specialty is lost customers, what makes them go away, what can we do to keep them and so on.

Her latest research quotes some amazing statistics. They are frightening.

She calculated that if a business loses just one customer per day and the average customer spends $50 per week, then the net loss to annual revenue (when you compound the numbers) is a frightening $989,000!

Couple that with some other statistics and you begin to see why customer retention is so critical. One other set of statistics that ties in nicely is what’s called "the lifetime value of the customer." Just two examples illustrate the point:

The lifetime value of a supermarket customer is $250,000 — put it another way, the average customer, you and me, will spend $250,000 in our lifetimes at the supermarket.

It means, of course, that when we go in to complain about the broken bottle of jam and they respond by telling you you must have done it in the car, they just kissed good-bye to $250,000 (less a little bit if you’re my age!)

Or let’s take cars. The lifetime value of a customer is calculated to be $200,000. So how come we tend not to hear from the people that sold us our car unless we call them.

In my case, I used to drive a Audi. I heard only once in 36 months from the person who sold it to me. There were no phone calls after each service to see if I’m happy. Call that building a relationship?

I call it losing a customer, don’t you?

It’s critically important we remember Laura Liswood’s research. And it’s even more important we take action on it, don’t you think?

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Taking a minute with the One Minute Manager

Here’s a great book that I dug up from my archives — one in the One Minute Manager series — this one’s called "The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey."

Just in case you haven’t got it, let me wet your appetite with some wonderfully succinct quotes from the book:

"It’s tough to work for a nervous boss — especially if you’re the one who’s making your boss nervous."

"Things NOT worth doing are NOT worth doing well."

"The only way to develop responsibility in people is to give them responsibility."

"Why is it that some managers are running out of time when their people are typically running out of work. "

The book is all about freeing up your time, getting monkeys off your back and teaming to deal effectively with priorities. Something we all need to do more of as we build better businesses.

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The Jar and the Coffee

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle; when 24 hours in a day are not enough; just remember the jar... and the coffee...

During a lecture, to demonstrate a point, the philosophy professor filled a very large mayonnaise jar with golf balls - and then asked his students if the jar was full. They unanimously agreed that it was.

He then poured a box of pebbles into the jar, shook it, and the pebbles rolled into the gaps between the golf balls. He again asked the students if the jar was full - and, again, they agreed it was.

Next, he picked up and began pouring a box of sand into the jar, shaking it until it filled up every little space remaining. The students again nervously agreed that it definately was full this time.

But, undeterred and smiling, the professor then produced and poured two cups of coffee into the jar.  The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life.”

“The golf balls are the important things in life - your family, your children, your faith, your health, your friends, your favourite passions: things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.”

“The pebbles are the other things, not so important, but still things that matter - your job, your house, your car…"

"The sand represents everything else - the small, unimportant stuff in life.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls." 

"The same goes for life - if you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you’ll never have room for the things that are important to you.  Pay attention to those things that are critical to your happiness - play with your children, make time for exercise and medical checkups, take your partner out to dinner, play another 18 holes, whatever you want.  There will always be time later to clean the house, fix the waste disposal, etc.

“Take care of the golf balls, the big things, first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities, the rest is just sand.”

In the thoughtful quietness that followed, one of the students raised her hand and asked what "the coffee represented".

The professor smiled. “I'm glad you asked me that. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life, or how busy it may seem, there is always space and time for a of cup of coffee with a friend.”

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